Mickelson's Podcast

Daily Musings of Jan Mickelson

So here’s the rest of the story. I sometimes tell Van, “Ya know, I was just cleaning my mouth and it went off”. This is one of these cases.

First some background. I’ve known Congressman Tom Latham for years. I have interviewed him dozens of times. He is by temperament, a “flaming moderate”. I am not. One of my favorite sports in talk radio is to get moderates to say immoderate things. Latham never falls for it. When he hits his exasperation wall, his standard line is, “Mickelson, I’m always happy to come on your show”. This is usually accompanied by a frozen grin along with a healthy dose of stink eye. Translation: “Mickelson you are an idiot and I’m not fallin’ for it”.

So, in this case Congressman Tom Latham was on my program on the 22nd and we covered a bunch of issues. The interview was fast paced and cheeky. Discussing the upcoming AG Holder contempt of Congress vote…Obama’s abuse of executive privilege vote following his executive directive regarding non-enforcement of immigration laws…Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the motive in the Holder contempt vote is really about voter suppression efforts in Florida. Then, the race-baiting in the Nixon-Kennedy debates (in 1960…nothing new) , ICE assuming jurisdiction over dinosaur bones (Latham was actually informed about it! Who knew?) Then, the taxpayers are about to be paying almost 3 billion dollars for phone stamps (free phones for the poor).

Added to the end of the list was a story about nuns on a bus headed to Washington to lobby congress for even more welfare money.

You can listen to the context yourself… my comment was intentionally non-PC to harass Congressman Tom Latham after dealing with a long litany of the absurd.

I asked, “Do you have any power to pull them over and pistol whip them?” The laughter was in my voice, not Latham’s. I noted that they called Congressman Ryan a fake Catholic on the budget, saying, “Liar, Liar, Pants on fire”.

Latham’s response is to say, “Aw Jeez, I’m always happy to be on your show”…the frozen grin, the stink eye…and then he plows forward into discussing the Ryan budget even as I continue to harass him.

He didn’t think it was funny, he didn’t agree and he most certainly didn’t attack the nuns. I doubt if he even knew about them all at when I brought them up. And for the record, I didn’t know much about them either except the short AP story about their attack on Ryan. I planned to ask Iowans what they thought about them later that morning. I did… short segment…about 12 minutes…couple of calls. Nobody, including me, gave it another thought. Most of the energy that morning was Urbandale’s zero tolerance policy against bottle rockets. A way more interesting topic, trust me.

Since this is an election year, and since the Latham-Boswell race contains two incumbents vying for the newly created congressional district, leftist bloggers cut part of that exchange out of context, abridging it to imply this was an attack on the nuns instead of me trying to harass Congressman Latham. This was done with malice and cynicism.

Just like NBC edited the 911 calls in the Treyvon Martin case to fit their template story, leftist bloggers did the same thing in this case. They edited out the part where Latham expresses discomfort and brushes off my nonsense. They falsely charged that this was said because of right-wing outrage over the politics of the nuns. Rubbish. This was nothing more than a boneheaded intentionally non-PC and stupid comment designed to get a rise out of a politician. The nuns were barely on anybody’s radar screen.

When I began to get some inquiries about this, my reaction was, “Oh crap, this edited tape makes me sound like I’m advocating harm against a bunch of nuns.!” If I read this stuff in print or heard it out of context I’d label this guy, THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD too….I’d give this guy the complete OBERMAN. So, I immediately wrote a letter to the nuns with the Network explaining what had happened. I apologized for my stupid comment and offered them an opportunity to be on my program where their cause could be heard.

So far, my letter has not been acknowledged. But, a couple of days later someone sent me link to a video of a left-wing talk show on which the nuns were being interviewed. A reference to my program was described as just another right-wing attack against poverty programs and the activists in the social justice movement.

Then, I fully understood what I had expected all along. I had been Alinskied. Here were the nuns basking in their imagined and asserted victim-hood. They were imagining, “We are victims of brutal threats, therefore we and our cause must be righteous. Just like Jesus.” My comment was being used to authenticate their template story. An explanation or apology would be an inconvenience to their martyrdom and fund-raising.

By the way, at least three activist websites, including Move-on dot Org and the Boswell campaign are using that out of context sound-bite as a fund raiser. Boswell’s is hilarious.

Three bucks. Really? HAH! That’s a bunch of outrage Leonard! Perhaps $3 is the right amount for phony contrived outrage.

Most of the response on this has come from outside Iowa from people who didn’t listen to the program. Most of the response is contrived outrage from leftist social media. It is so lame and transparent that I’ve ignored it. For some listeners who are genuinely concerned, I’ve explained to them what’s going on. Then they become annoyed that they’ve been played by political operatives.

Speaking of response, and the caliber of invective coming from the left, here is a sample from Congressman Latham’s Facebook page… about his 95 year old grandmother.

“That woman is a servant of the Devil who raised up a liar to serve Satan’s bankers. She’s nothing but a breeder of this nation’s enemies…it is my prayer that the True and Living God will send that demoniac old whore into the fires of Hell that she and your blasphemous family deserve.”

There is one of the important lessons to be learned from this. For my own part, I’ve learned, “Don’t give your enemies a club they will use it”. For the rest of us, we should learn that we shouldn’t believe everything you see and read in the media. I’m IN the media and I am telling you that it has never been worse. Activist bloggers are one thing, but now mainstream newspapers and news agencies are doing the same thing. Fair and Balanced is a myth. Reagan was right. “Trust, but Verify”.

I’m a big boy…I’ve been to this rodeo before. My listeners know what this is about. My only concern is that my idiot comment could hurt a pretty decent, but boring congressman. That, I would truly regret.

The next time I reach for something non-PC to say, it will not involve nuns. Trust me on that…might be baby seals…or bald eagles …or something.